The ‘Putinization’ of Hungary
Last week, the nonpartisan human rights watchdog group Freedom House published its annual “Nations in Transit” report, which offers particular focus on the nations of the former Soviet Union and Eastern Bloc. Alongside the usual depressing reports from Central Asia (where every country, except Kyrgyzstan, is still designated “Not Free”), the most important finding regards Hungary.
“Hungary’s year-on-year performance [is] the most glaring example of democratic decline among the newer European Union (EU) members, where the combination of poorly rooted traditions of democratic practice, resilient networks of corruption, low levels of public trust, and shaky economic conditions have hampered indelible democratic reform,” the report states. In a statement released with the report, Freedom House President David J. Kramer went one step further with an attention-grabbing (yet unfortunately accurate) use of the word “Putinization” to characterize developments in Hungary and Ukraine, the latter of which is not a European Union member and is widely considered to be in a different league entirely when it comes to things like judicial independence, political corruption, press freedom, and the like…